Douglas Electric Cooperative

10/31/2026

10/28/2026

🎃 **HALLOWEEN DOESN'T SCARE US… THANKSGIVING DOES!** 🦃😱

Ghosts? Nope.
Goblins? Not really.
Things that go bump in the night? We're used to those. We operate an electric utility.

But you want to hear a REAL horror story?

**Picture this…**

It's Thanksgiving Day. The whole family is gathered. Grandma's been cooking since 5 a.m. The house smells amazing. The mashed potatoes are ready, the cranberry sauce is perfect, and there's a 22-pound turkey in the oven with exactly ONE HOUR left to cook.

Then, without warning…

**CLICK. BOOM**

The oven goes dark.

The lights go out.

The house goes silent.

Grandma slowly turns around and reaches for her phone.

**And somewhere a Douglas Electric Lineman gets a call** 😱

**THE FEAR IS REAL, PEOPLE!**

Just thinking about it gives us chills.

And the scariest part? Unlike ghosts and goblins, Thanksgiving power outages are real. Sadly, they happen sometimes. And when they do, our linemen leave their own Thanksgiving dinners to try to save yours.

And here's the really ironic part…

**You'd be surprised how many Thanksgiving outages are actually caused by TURKEYS getting into our power lines!** 🦃⚡

They are fighting back!

So this Halloween, you can keep your ghosts, goblins, and haunted houses.

**We're more afraid of a cold turkey and a mad grandma.**

Happy Halloween from Douglas Electric Cooperative! 🎃⚡

10/26/2026

⏰ APPARENTLY, WE DIDN’T SAVE ENOUGH DAYLIGHT!

Daylight Saving Time ends this weekend. Apparently, we didn’t save enough daylight to make it through the winter. We all need to try harder next year.

We’re not sure where all that saved daylight went. Our engineering department believes it’s being stored somewhere in the Caribbean and has generously volunteered to go investigate.

We have declined their request.

Daylight Saving Time ends this Sunday, November 1, at 2:00 a.m. That means clocks go BACK one hour.

And before anyone asks, no, this is NOT some clever scheme by Douglas Electric Cooperative to charge you for an extra hour of electricity.

It’s a real thing. We checked.

Frankly, we wish we’d thought of it.

While you’re changing your clocks, it’s also a great time to check the batteries in your smoke detectors!

Remember to FALL BACK one hour Saturday night!

10/19/2026

Douglas Electric randomly selected members to participate in our 2026 Member Satisfaction Survey. If you receive an email or letter from us, we hope you’ll take a few minutes to share your feedback. Complete the survey by November 9, 2026, and you’ll be entered to win one of three $150 bill credits!

Your feedback helps us continue providing reliable service and stay focused on what matters most, our members. Thank you for helping us make Douglas Electric even better!

10/16/2026

We don’t have a social media department at Douglas Electric Cooperative. We don’t even have a dedicated social media employee. In fact, our social media kinda just happens. No meetings, no edits…just someone has an idea and posts it.

A handful of employees occasionally put together posts when they’re not busy doing their actual jobs. Nobody is required to do it. They enjoy it, and most posts take just a few minutes.

We have two simple goals:

Goal #1: Keep the cost as close to zero as possible. It’s our members’ money.

Goal #2: Keep our members informed, educated, and occasionally entertained.

And we think it’s working. We’re reaching more members, getting people engaged, and having a little fun along the way.

We’ve had a few comments lately about our occasional use of AI-generated images. Some have even suggested we should be paying someone to create them. But at our size, I doubt we’ll ever have a dedicated social media employee. We’d rather spend that money keeping your lights on and your rates low.

There’s an old saying that if you put a thousand monkeys in front of a thousand typewriters, eventually they’ll produce the works of Shakespeare. I am not even sure where we would get that many monkeys to make this picture. Wildlife Safari would not loan us the few they have.

We’re working with considerably fewer monkeys, and occasionally we give them an AI assist on a picture instead of typewriters.

Sometimes we get Shakespeare. Sometimes we get monkeys.

But what do you think? Is our social media doing okay for you?

10/14/2026

Douglas Electric Cooperative is excited to sponsor one local student for the 2027 Washington, D.C. Youth Tour! This incredible, weeklong adventure from June 16-23, gives students the opportunity to:

⭐ Explore historic landmarks and monuments in Washington, D.C.
⭐ Meet elected officials and learn how our government works.
⭐ Make new friends with students from across the country.
⭐ Discover the important role electric cooperatives play in our communities.

It's an unforgettable opportunity to learn, explore, and make memories that will last a lifetime!

📣 Know a student who would love this experience? Encourage them to apply. Your adventure starts here!

Applications for the 2027 Youth Tour are available on our website at https://www.dec.coop/2027-northwest-youth-tour/. The deadline to submit an application is February 4, 2027.

10/14/2026

THE CASE OF THE $7 TEENAGER
Based on real events from a mom-but highly dramatized because it is fun, and that's what we do.

Day 1. Mom leaves town for a few days. Her 17-year-old son has the house to himself. He assures her everything will be fine.

Day 2. Her phone buzzes. It’s Douglas Electric's Power Ahead message. Her house used almost $7 of electricity yesterday.

Now, this mom knows her house. It runs about $4 a day. Not $5, not $6...it uses $4. So $7 is not a rounding error. $7 is a teenager, home alone. She is going to let it slide, it is only one day after all.

Day 3. $7 again. ...There is a phone call home and the usage drops.

Now we don’t know exactly what happened at that house. We have our theories. Every light on. Oven running for one frozen pizza to another. Thermostat cranked. Maybe a few friends who “weren’t going to stay long.” The data doesn’t say, but whatever was happening stopped.

Day 4. $4 dollars again.

So how did Mom know from hundreds of miles away?

She’s on Power Ahead, and a lot of you have never heard of it.

Here’s how it works. Instead of a bill at the end of the month, you pay ahead. Put $20, $50 or whatever in your account, and each day what you used comes out of your balance. You can check it any time, and you get a daily update.

That daily number is the whole magic. When you know your normal, you notice your not-normal. A new space heater. A water heater acting up. A teenager.

You can set alerts for when your balance is getting low. Three days of power left, then two, and so on.

If it runs to zero, the power shuts off automatically. Add money, any amount that fits your budget, and it comes back on within about a minute. No reconnect fee. No waiting on a crew.

The rest of the perks:

⚡ A slightly lower rate than traditional residential service.
💵 No deposit. Already have one with us? We apply it to your Power Ahead balance, which for some folks is a month of electricity already paid for.
🚫 No late fees. No disconnect or reconnect fees.
📱 Daily usage and alerts set up your way.
💰 Pay when it works for you, not when a due date says so.

Fine print, told plainly. You can switch back to regular billing if it’s not for you. If a deposit is required, you’d pay it again since the old one went into your Power Ahead account, and there’s a limit on how many times you can switch. And you do have to watch your balance, because the system will disconnect you when it runs out.

This is a choice, not a push. If you like your monthly bill, keep it. We’re a member-owned, not-for-profit co-op, and we think more choices for our members is a good thing. That’s the whole reason we offer it.

Want in? Call our Member Service Representatives. They’ll walk you through it.

Epilogue. Mom is home. The son has learned that his mother can see the electric meter from anywhere on Earth. We suspect he now turns off lights in rooms he’s not even in. 😂

No 17-year-olds were harmed in the making of this post. One received a shocking education about electricity. ⚡

10/14/2026

🚨 PUBLIC SAFETY ALERT: ROGUE POWER POLES ON THE LOOSE! 🚨

Power poles. You just can’t trust them.

We put them WAY over on the side of the road, minding their own business, and somehow they keep jumping out in front of unsuspecting motorists!

Now, we’re not nearly as worried about those sneaky buggers as we are about the poor motorists who might get hurt, or at the very least, end up with a pretty expensive repair bill.

And here’s the worst part. Those poles will ALWAYS make it look like YOUR fault when the officer arrives!

Somehow, after jumping out in front of your car, they manage to sneak right back to the side of the road, dragging your car along with them, so it looks like YOU ran into THEM!

They’re sneaky that way.

All kidding aside, we had another car vs. pole accident today. Please be careful out there. We can replace poles and repair power lines, but we can’t replace you.

Stay alert. Those poles are everywhere, and apparently, they’re up to no good! 😉

10/12/2026

Most people don’t remember when we helped Batman and Robin stay safe in the 1960’s.